Reaching Out Across the Divide
Five high school students from AIS are going to Malawi this summer to establish links with an international school in Africa and to undertake several CAS projects. The Bishop Mackenzie International School [BMIS] in the capital city Lilongwe is, like AIS, an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, offering the IB Diploma. Our aim is to form a sister bond with this school in Africa and, in partnership with their established CAS infrastructure, adopt a local school in Malawi. The Children of Hope CAS group at AIS will, through their fundraising efforts, support the local school by providing them with stationery, textbooks and even desks and chairs. These items will be purchased and distributed either by the CAS group at BMIS in Lilongwe, or purchased in the United States and shipped to BMIS for distribution.
While in Lilongwe, our students will also be involved in another community service project with an orphanage in the city. HIV-AIDS has resulted in an ever-increasing number of orphaned children. These children are generally left in the care of uncles and aunts, grandparents, or older siblings. The resources available to the extended family become stretched to breaking point. The orphaned children are often neglected and sometimes even abandoned. The Mother Theresa - Sisters of Charity Orphanage in Lilongwe takes in these orphaned children when the extended family just cannot cope with the added burden of another mouth to feed. The orphans are generally malnourished and often ill. The Malawi Tour group will be taking much needed supplies to the orphanage, as well as funds raised by the Children of Hope CAS group in order to purchase and hang mosquito nets for the cribs.
Besides these projects, the touring students will be visiting the US Embassy and other international organizations in Lilongwe, to gain insight into their functioning, and to investigate possible career opportunities within such operations around the world. We will be stopping over in South Africa en route to Malawi and will spend a few days on safari in the Pilanesberg National Park west of Johannesburg. In Malawi, the students will spend a few days at Lake Malawi and go on a river safari through the Liwonde National Park on the Shire River, the outlet of Lake Malawi.
We will return with plenty of photographs and will be sure to give you some feedback in the Globetrotter next quarter.